In this episode, Nadia Christidi explains how an anthropological approach can help us understand the political practices and economic rationalities of water governance based on her fieldwork in Dubai. Danya Al-Saleh is welcomed on as a guest host.
Nadia Christidi
Nadia Christidi is a PhD candidate in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and an arts practitioner. Her dissertation research explores how cities that face water supply challenges, which are expected to intensify with climate change, are imagining, planning, and preparing for the future of water; the cities she focuses on are Los Angeles, Dubai, and Cape Town. Nadia’s work has been exhibited at Kunsthaus Hamburg; Salt Ulus, Ankara; Salt Galata, Istanbul; and Beirut Art Center. She was the 2019 Art Jameel Writer in Residence, for which she was commissioned to produce a publication on water in Dubai (forthcoming in fall 2020). She is the 2020-2021 Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellow for Water Solutions of MIT. Nadia holds an MA in Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research, New York, and a BA in History of Art from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania.
Danya Al-Saleh
Danya Al-Saleh is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a feminist economic geographer who works on the everyday politics of US universities in the Middle East and North Africa. Her dissertation research examines the relationship between US universities, engineering education, and the oil and gas industry in the Gulf, specifically in Qatar. Engaging debates in feminist political economy, critical university studies, and energy geographies, this project examines the role of US universities in reproducing socio-political formations that require the accelerated extraction of fossil fuels. She is also collaborating on a project which traces the nearly century-long role that the American University in Cairo (AUC) has played in Cairo’s uneven urbanization through knowledge production about desert development and the acquisition of suburban desert land.
References:
- Nadia Christidi's Website: Nadiaalissa.wordpress.com
- Gökçe Günel. “The Infinity of Water: Climate Change Adaptation in the Arabian Peninsula.” Public Culture 28.2 (May 2016): 291-315.
- Michael Christopher Low. “Desert Dreams of Drinking the Sea, Consumed by the Cold War: Transnational Flows of Desalination and Energy from the Pacific to the Persian Gulf.” Environment and History 26.2 (May 2020): 145-174.
- Toby Craig Jones. Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
- Candis Callison. How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
